moody Americans

Last week, after I posted a graph suggesting that when unemployment rates go up presidential approval goes down, my understandably despondent friend Chris wondered if that meant Americans only like presidents who help them make more money to buy more stuff.

I don't think that's the case. People don't mind when their fortunes don't rise. They do get, however, get pissy when they see their fortunes fall.

At least, I recently ran across that argument in Jared Diamond's Collapse; historically neighboring nations don't go to war when times are bad, but they do take up arms when a period of economic growth is followed by economic decline. It's a theory, as another friend - Frauke - pointed out, that was made popular by James Davies in the 50's:

"Revolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and social development is followed by a short period of sharp reversal. People then subjectively fear that ground gained with great effort will be quite lost; their mood becomes revolutionary."

No one's revolting or going to war in the US, but the mood of Americans - as expressed by presidential approval - probably follows similar ups and downs. Much has been made recently of increasing income inequality in the US and of the social tensions that may result. But I don't think growing gaps between the rich and not-rich is enough to get Americans glowering at each other - it's only when combined with seeing jobs and paychecks decline that we get ticked off.

Two places you can look for evidence are Brazil and India. Brazil had one of the world's worst records on income disparity over the past decade, as measured by Gini, and yet its president (and now his new successor) was wildly popular. India's Gini is more moderate, but as this $1 Billion home in the middle of Mumbai's slums show, the gap between rich and poor is starkly visible. Like their Brazilian cousins, the mood in India is high. Why? Because like Brazil, they know their collective wealth and prestige is on the upswing.

Americans are seeing a different picture; while longterm forecasts of US decline are probably premature, when short spells of spiking unemployment occur - while Wall Street paychecks appear continue to bloom - it's enough to make the working classes think the fall is imminent. If Davies is to be believed, that should make us disgruntled indeed.

kool-aid denial

Andrew Ferguson over at Commentary is the latest victim of the Bugjuice-calling-the-kettle-KoolAid syndrome.

Critiquing journalists' tendency to only debunk research studies when their conclusions disagree with the journalist's world view, he - well - debunks a research study that disagrees with his world view.

FBI makes another terrorist

It's the second time this year the FBI has taken a young aspiring terrorist - and turned him into one.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud clearly had dreams of being a jihadist and bringing devastation onto Americans, but his attempts to sign into a terrorist training camp got nowhere. No problem; the FBI stepped in and helped him make his fantasies a reality - even assisting him in building a (fake) bomb.

I'm not a legal scholar, but it seems there should be a difference between dreaming about a crime and actually perpetrating one. Many disaffected youth imagine pulling off criminal acts but don't go through with it - whether because they lack the means, the cojones or the will to ultimately do so. If the NYPD was in the business of making every juvenile's criminal fantasies come true we'd double the occupancy of Rikers. But the NYPD - I hope - is interested in making fewer criminals, not more.

Why is the FBI different? Clearly, the stakes are higher. Wanting to pull off a drug deal or store heist is not the same as aiming to murder hundreds of innocents at a shot. But I'm not sure that - considerable - distinction really makes a difference.

The media all report that Mohamed was dead set on his intentions to bomb a gathering of Portland Christmas revelers and that not even the FBI agent's concern that he might kill children would deter him. What the media doesn't point out is that Mohamed was expressing his determination to someone he believed was a fellow terrorist, and perhaps even someone he looked to as a mentor. That person, of course, was an FBI agent acting the part. We don't know exactly what the FBI agent said to Mohamed, but as they say, actions speak stronger than words and this agent was helping Mohamed to plan a terrorist attack.

Up until the moment the FBI called Mohamed to help him orchestrate an act of terror, Mohamed was on his own. But when the FBI moved in to act as Mohamed's accomplice he stopped acting alone. Sure, as a human being, he always had free will to continue or stop his plans - but would he have gone through with them without the support of the FBI? If I stopped to think about how many ideas and plans I've had - and even eagerly wanted to accomplish - but have done nothing with, I'd be writing a list all day. We can never be certain how likely Mohamed would have bombed a public square in Portland if it had not been for the FBI, but we can surely say the likelihood was less than 100%.

Again, without being a legal scholar, this surely must be the reasoning behind why entrapment is a no-no. It recognizes that we rarely act as lone wolves - but that our actions are almost always subject to encouragement and discouragement.

So why are we encouraging terrorism?

Update: Glenn Greenwald at Salon and Ted Conover at Slate also question the FBI's terrorist baiting practices.

social research fun

Kevin Lewis at Boston.com sums up conclusions from five social research studies, including:

• If you want to win in the NBA, you've got to reach out and touch your teammates.
• One thing that'll make you argue your beliefs more adamantly: doubt.
• To make it easier for your students to learn you may have to make it harder for them to learn.
• Promoting safety can promote civility (at least on oil rigs).
• Nietzsche was almost right: what doesn't kill you could make you happier.

partisanship for bipartisanship

Michael Barone shakes up conventional wisdom in the American Interest, arguing that it is not partisanship - but rather voter volatility - that makes compromise and cross-party coalitions impossible.

"As already suggested, the essence of most bipartisan compromises is that they contain provisions unpopular with constituencies of both parties and often provisions that are unpopular with a majority of voters. That’s why such measures tend to be passed by bipartisan coalitions of members with safe seats.

"In such an unsettled political environment [as the one we have today], it may be difficult—maybe impossible—to round up the votes needed for bipartisan legislation. Politicians will not be inclined to take on additional and avoidable risks. And that difficulty means that legislators in a position, whether because of expertise or committee membership, to cobble together such legislation may just conclude that it’s not worth the trouble.

"Absent large congressional majorities, therefore, it looks like we are stuck for a while—not only, or mainly, because of ideological polarization and party sorting, but because of electoral volatility. When you think about it, this suits the definition of irony. Why are voters so willing to “throw out the bums”? Because they think they can’t get much of anything done. Why can’t they get much of anything done? Because they’re afraid that bipartisan compromise will get them thrown out of office."

Two other possible ironies not mentioned by Barone: Since nothing creates stability like firmly partisan districts, perhaps more gerrymandering is needed for bipartisan legislation to happen? Even more counter-intuitive and depressing: if engaged, independent and open-minded voters are more likely to be volatile (than dyed-in-the-wool Republicans and Democrats), then maybe we should be advocating for greater voter apathy and blind-partisanship? Now, them's some grim thoughts.

our stories ourselves

John Bickle and Sean Keating have a nifty little article in the New Scientist packaging together the many wonders of the left brain. I'm a right-brainer, so it's hard to admit that the left-brain is at the core of our humanness; it makes the stories that make us.

You may be familiar with that inner voice in your head. According to Bickle and Keating, it's helping to place your daily encounters into the grand epic of your life. (Bickle captured our brains on MRI not only talking to ourselves - but also "listening".) Those narratives add up to our "identity" - the notion that you are a unique, unified, intentional being, rather than a sac of cells pinballing through life.

The authors also conjecture what might happen to our inner stories as digital media breaks up traditional narrative. Their answer: not much. Not even haiku texting can keep us from our sagas.

But the left brain is not all self-involved soap opera. A big piece of making up stories is making up causal relations ("I didn't get the promotion because I bungled the project" or "He left me because I'm a bad cook"). That instinct to look for cause and effect is also what makes us handy at spinning out theories to explain the world around us. Luckily, our left brain has the right brain to help it figure out which of those cockamamie theories are true.

still the economy...

In a Zogby poll this week, Obama's approval rating dipped below the 40% marker for the first time since taking office. With a new statistical bone in sight, the politerati pounced - and we got a new wave of predictions for Obama 2012 and advice on what policy stands and leadership initiatives he can take to win America back.

But wiser heads suggest that Barack's current disapproval ratings and 2012 prospects have, as always, more to do with the economy than health care, Afghanistan and Sarah Palin combined.

We've all heard "it's the economy, stupid" a zillion times, but I was curious to see just how much the economy ruled our collective opinions about our Leader in Chief. So I decided to spend my Thanksgiving charting it out, pulling down unemployment stats (thought to be the clearest economic indicator on Main Street) from the BLS and historical approval ratings from UCSB.

Here is the harvest of my labor.

At first glance there doesn't seem to be an air-tight case for "good economy=presidential approval", but if you take a close look, the evidence is suggestive if not convincing.

First thing to notice is that when presidents enter office, they usually do so on a well-spring of positive reviews (only Reagan and Clinton entered with less than 60% love). I also pointed out on the chart three non-economic events that caused extreme swings in approval. Two positive - the Gulf War and 9/11. One negative - Watergate. (Other blips - including Reagan's assassination attempt, Iran Contra, the 2nd Gulf war - couldn't be squeezed in.)

But incoming presidential ardor and the rare non-economic factor aside, it does look like one of the worst things for a president's ratings are rising unemployment rates.

The gray areas highlight times of soaring unemployment. In most cases, while the red of unemployment goes up, the blue of approval goes down. Eisenhower's ratings dipped during both times of rising unemployment. Nixon's first spate of unemployment also spelled disfavor; by the second surge in joblessness his ratings were so battered by Watergate they couldn't get much worse. Ford and Reagan entered office with unemployment spiking and so saw their approval plummet (Reagan got a temporary popularity reprieve after being shot by Hinckley). As for Bush I & II, not even the hugely popular Gulf War and the patriotic fervor following 9/11 could stave off the dive in popularity they'd soon suffer from joblessness.

The non-gray areas, conversely, show how good economic times can boost ratings, the biggest beneficiaries being Reagan and Clinton. The only presidents who buck the trend are LBJ, Carter and Bush II. LBJ and Bush II both had the albatross of dragged out wars dragging them down, which may have outweighed rosy job markets. As for Carter, he had another economic problem - inflation - causing him loss of love. (The one benefit of inflation, not coincidentally, is lower unemployment.)

So where does that leave Obama? Like Reagan, Barack came into office with unemployment on a steep incline. That combined with the normal inflation of popularity of incoming presidents meant that it was only to be expected Obama's popularity would take a beating once in office. A few have taken the Reagan comparison further, pointing out that once people start getting jobs again Obama will likely follow in Reagan's footsteps picking up popularity points as well. Given the record of our Oval Office leaders since the days of Ike, barring a Watergate or military quagmire, Obama should indeed be putting all his bets on more jobs. It could, indeed, still be the economy, stupid.

fetishizing freedom

We Americans inherited much of our love of liberty from our British forefathers. But according to Tristam Riley-Smith, since kicking our imperial parents out - in part over a disagreement over freedom - our conceptions of liberty have taken different paths.

Constitutional scholars talk about "positive" and "negative" rights; the first give you the ability to do things (vote, express yourself) while the second protect you from things being done unto you (be discriminated against). Similarly, Isaiah Berlin split "liberties" up into those that allow you to do something and those that keep you from being constrained. The complication comes, of course, when someone's positive liberty (say, to serenade his sweetheart at midnight) butts up against others' negative liberty (to not have their sleep interfered with). The story of liberal societies is in many ways about how to balance the positive and negative.

Americans seem to have sided with protecting the negative; in the choice between government working to give its citizens more liberty or government just keeping out of our business, we'll take door number two.

The British, however, recognize more that in order to protect the liberties of some you sometimes need to limit the freedom of others. So, in order to exercise the liberty to breathe clean air, the freedom of factories to pollute has to be reined in. Or to give people real freedom to participate in society, the government needs to provide public education - which is paid for by constraining the pocket-books of wealthier citizens.

That's not the kind of liberty Libertarians on our shores like to consider, but maybe Liberals should start co-opting the phrase for themselves. Along with "liberty to own guns" and "liberty to not pay taxes", how about "liberty to get an education" and "liberty to have health care?"

America in red and blue

I can never get enough of maps.

In this one, it's fun to see American flip its red-blue axis - a slow process that took 70 years and the Civil Rights Movement to play out.

And one more surprising find: America was more geographically polarized under Clinton than under Bush. Who knew?

paranoia and prudery go head-to-head

When one day we look back on how "the great privacy movement" began, it won't be accounts of Muslim homes being searched without warrants or gigabytes of data being swept up by the National Security Agency that sparked revolution - but rather images of underwear on TSA screens and videos of passengers being felt up by federal agents.

Americans finally seem to be growing wary of privacy incursions in the name of national security - and it is our prudery that's pushing us to take a stand.

Of the many forces that get humans in action, fear is the clear forerunner. You don't need the reminder of today's stampede in Cambodia to know that fear can get humans to do almost anything (include trample other humans to death). Fear of terrorism has gotten Americans to accept secret searches of our homes and warrant-less searches of our online communications, not to mention bare feet at the airport.

Our sense of privacy and injustice have not been enough to counter that fear - but privacy concerning our private parts may have the edge.

It may be that this visceral reaction to protect our "junk" is not worth exploring - it is what it obviously is - but I couldn't help being reminded of Jonathan Haidt's "moral foundations theory." According to Haidt, morality comes naturally - and it comes in five flavors. Some of us are more instinctively offended by injustice, while others get their moral dander up when someone is unloyal. One of those moral dimensions - disgust - may be what's kicking in at airport security scans. (The other dimensions, btw, are "caring for others" and "respecting authority.")

At a TSA briefing for House staffers in DC, people were "averting their eyes" when it came time for the pat-down demonstration on a young female volunteer. No one has ever averted their eyes from a questionable FBI search of library records. That difference - whether an action is eye-avert-worthy or not - is not to be underestimated. While most Americans do not approve of the government tracking down their library records, they're not upset enough to make a fuss. Images of men agents feeling down other men (and women feeling up women) just may be the one thing that's worse than the miniscule chance that there's a terrorist on our plane.

It'll be interesting to see in the next couple of weeks whether our outrage over being touched is the thing that finally gets Americans to draw the line on privacy. Who knows. Fear of exploding planes still has a hold on us. But in the looming the battle of paranoia over prudery, I'm putting my money on the prudes.

when reason does back-flips

The Independent reports today that, according to the Pope, you may not be sinning if you use a condom - but only if you're a prostitute... and gay.

Juan Williams and knowing your unknowable self

In September I introduced the idea (not to the world, but to this blog) that the notion that we can ever be rational is a foolish one. Not that reason doesn't play a role in how we make decisions; it certainly can. But at the end of the day, every decision we make - and every thing we do - is mixed with at least a dash of emotion.

For most of us most of the time, that dash is more like a tanker-full. A common metaphor among social psychologists is to equate our emotions to a two ton elephant, with our "rational" brain as its 100 lb driver, hopelessly trying to steer the mammoth thing in the direction we think wisest.

To natural emoters like me, it may be patently obvious that the elephant is in charge. No matter how much our reason counsels us to not be nervous or not be upset, we still find ourselves trembling as we stand up to give that board presentation or when we bump into our ex-lover at a cocktail party with his new girlfriend. For those of us who go through their day relatively unperturbed, however, it may be less evident that emotions run the show.

This is, of course, because not all emotions manifest themselves as crying jags or fits of rage; most are quiet operators that work below the radar. Indeed, some social psychologist define emotions as those forces that work at the unconscious level.

Your mind-body complex has an endless array of ways to slyly guide your behavior via emotion. I'll dig into many on this blog, but for starters let's look at stereotypes and prejudice.

In the wake of the Rick Sanchez' and Juan Williams' firings for voicing questionably anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic comments, I was reminded of how little we like to consider ourselves bigots. Sure, other people are - but I don't let my actions towards other be shaded by racial or ethnic prejudice. Or do I?

A couple years ago I took a few spins on Harvard's "Implicit Association Test" site to discover that, yes, just like everyone else on this earth (maybe excepting the Dalai Lama) I have my hidden prejudices.

The social psychologists that design the IAT know that you can't find out if someone has a prejudice by asking them; outside of Aryan Nation rallies, most Americans like to believe they are color-blind and will report so. So researchers use a trick. They depend on the brain's way of associating words and concepts. If two words - say, cat and dog - are associated in our mind, they'll have a strong neural connection. When I say "cat", all those words associated with cat will get activated, consciously or subconsciously - so if I next ask "what does 'god' spell backwards' you'll be that much quicker to say "dog" than if I just asked the question out of the blue. (This is a phenomenon known as "priming," which marketers love to exploit.) To look for hidden prejudices social psychologists will hone in on those milliseconds more it will take you to make connections with and without priming.

Suspecting I had a - maybe not so hidden - bias against overweight people, I just took the IAT's fat-ist test. Sure enough, I have a "moderate" prejudice against the overweight. (I have plenty of company; of those who have taken the same test, most have negative views of pudge.)

But what does that mean? Rationally, I know that there are many reasons why people may be overweight and - to my knowledge - there is no correlation between being overweight and being "bad" in any other way. In fact, anecdotally, I'd say that most overweight people I know are kind, intelligent and interesting people. Most importantly, it's no skin off my back if someone else carries a few extra pounds.

So, why in heck do I associate being fat with being "bad?" I have no idea (but could make a few guesses - in another post). The point is that in spite of priding myself in being supremely rational, my subconscious is supremely irrational - and whether I like it or not it's running the show much of the time. The important thing is to be aware of the fact - so you can take precautions against it.

That's one of the reasons the Juan Williams story was so disappointing. On his stint on Fox, Williams admitted that he gets fearful when he sees Muslims at the airport but also pointed out that it's important to put that irrational fear aside when thinking about policy. What I heard was "I'm bigoted just like everybody else, but we need to get past our bigotry when we come together to talk about national issues." What the media - and NPR - heard was "I'm an unabashed bigot."

Too bad. Williams was helping us to be aware of our prejudices and asking us to know our unknowable selves. Instead of thanking him, we canned him.

why evolutionary psychologists get a bad rap

A few weeks ago I posted a proud confession that I am an "evolutionary psychologist" - or that I think like one, always asking the question when it comes to human behavior "what would a hunter gatherer do?"

The post was inspired by an article in the Wall Street Journal which is an example of the reasons you, dear reader, would be justified in claiming evolutionary psychology is bunch of bullhooey.

Evolutionary psychology takes as its premise that the behavior of humans today can often be best understood in light of how that behavior probably helped our hunter-gatherer ancestors survive and get their genes into the next generation. So while it doesn't make much evolutionary sense why a toddler would scream for his mommy at daycare today (he's unlikely to get harmed and his mom is in an office building clear across town), if that same toddler was left in the bush without his pre-historic mom eons ago those screams would stand a good chance of keeping him around to see the next day.

The screaming toddler is an example of "well, duh" evolutionary insight. Matt Ridley (who generally is an exceptional thinker) gives a good "excuse me, huh?" evolutionary take in his WSJ opinion piece.

Ridley starts his article sensibly enough, explaining that while it may be unfashionable to say so evolutionary theory can account for many of the differences between men and women. But rather than serve up some "no, duh" examples - eg, women are more nurturing because they were likely the prime parenters, men are more aggressive because they had to defend their women, etc - Ridley offers instead the golf course and to the mall to clarify how evolution shaped our behavior.

Women are thought to have been the "gatherers" and men the "hunters" in the pre-historic division of labor, says Ridley. This is not a much disputed point. But for Ridley those past job roles explain why today men love golf and women love shopping.

"Without knowing it, golf-course designers are setting up a sort of idealized abstraction of the hunting ground, while shoe retailers are setting up a sort of ersatz echo of the gathering field," writes Ridley.

It's no wonder evolutionary psychology inspires eye rolls.

I was trying to think why Ridley's golf-hunter and mall-gatherer is so maddeningly inane. He is, after-all, only noting a valid cliche about men and women. Although some women love golf, let's face it guys more often go gaga over the sport. And show me a straight man who will moon over Jimmy Choos for hours on end - I have a bridge to sell you.

But Ridley's golf-course-as-hunting-ground and macy's-as-foraging-forest theory strike two blows against logic and common sense.

First, as I claimed in my earlier post, one of the most persuasive arguments for evolutionary psychology is the observation that so many of behaviors are universal, found in every village and city world-wide. If a behavior - say, crying for mommy - is so prevalent, odds are it comes from something in our genetic makeup (which varies little across continents) rather than culture (which varies little). Golf, it is safe to say, is not one of these behaviors. (One might counter-argue that the only reason golf isn't played across the globe is that it's price-prohibitive. That might be so, but it still leaves the golf-as-universal claim as conjecture.) What Ridley could have used as a strong example is "sports" in general. Without being an anthropologist I'm going to go out on a limb and say men in all cultures play some kind of team sport. Trying to figure out what ancient instinct sports satisfy is a worthwhile pursuit; I'll even go out on a limb and say it has something to do with, yes, the hunt as well as the occasional need to attack the neighboring tribe.

That leads to the second rule of sensible evolutionizing; when looking at a universal behavior, always be sure to ask "what are the other possible evolutionary explanations?" Working off the cuff here, I can come up with a few other scenarios to explain golf and shoe shopping.

Golf first: take a little competition (males fighting for status, which is really fighting for fertile chicks), add an exclusive and expensive activity (more social status), a green setting (a reassuring sign that food is available) and, okay, a little thrill of hitting a target far in the distance (hunting) - and you get golf.

As for shoe shopping, when Ridley tips his hat to "foraging", he's putting too much emphasis on the "shopping" and not enough on the "shoe." Replace shoe with "grocery" and he'll find women much less happy to browse for hours (and, of course, grocery shopping is more akin to our ancestral activities). Shoe shopping, as any girl will attest, is not as much about exploring as it is about primping and imagining how deliciously and fabulously delectable you are to the object of your desire (true today as it was millenia ago). If you bring along your girlfriends, all the better - now you get to bond and gossip, two other behaviors that likely served to improve life for African Eves.

Don't be mistaken; I'm not trying to replace Ridley's evolutionary claptrap with my own claptrap. I'm just trying to point out that other (and, perhaps, more plausible) evolutionary explanations for golfing and shoe shopping are available than the ones he has to offer. Which explanations are correct is something we might never know. But that doesn't mean all evolutionary theorists are just making stuff up: the smart ones figure things out the old fashioned way - coming up with a theory, figuring out a test that could disprove the theory, and if/when that test fails to prove their hypothesis, then knowing they are one step closer to better understanding. There are plenty of examples; let's hope Mr. Ridley offers them next time around.

double speak du jour

I am initiating a new series of entries on this blog: "Double speak du jour: how politicians lose their tether with reality and/or the English language."

To start us off, here's Mitch McConnell defending the use of earmarks:

"Every president would like for us to appropriate all the money and send it to them and let them spend it in any way they want to."

I mean, really, who died and made the president the Chief Executive?